We have never played Stade Rennais FC (known as Rennes) and so our competitive history begins on Thursday.
This is Arsenal’s 25th European game against opponents from France and we haven’t lost any of the 12 matches on the other side of La Manche, winning eight. Arsenal’s former Czech Republic international goalkeeper Petr Čech played for Rennes from 2002–04, making 78 appearances in total.
Rennes’s history goes back more than 2,000 years, at a time when it was a small Gallic village named Condate. Together with Vannes and Nantes, it was one of the major cities of the ancient Duchy of Brittany. From the early sixteenth century until the French Revolution, Rennes was a parliamentary, administrative and garrison city of the historic province of Brittany of the Kingdom...